A Background Check on Egomaniacal Killer Larry Gene Bell
(‘Last Will,’ Forensic Files)
A kidnapper who taunts an abducted child’s parents is usually the stuff of fictional police dramas.
Unfortunately, Larry Gene Bell did it in real life.
In 1985, he kidnapped Shari Smith and assailed her mother and father with a heartbreaking letter and disturbing phone calls.
“Last Will,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, does a good job of helping the audience get to know Shari and her parents, but leaves us with a lot of questions about Larry Gene Bell.
Local news outlets. Where did this rather goofy-looking killer come from? Were there any early warning signs or did he suddenly become unhinged? For this post, I looked into his background.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Last Will” along with extra information from internet resources, including coverage from South Carolina newspapers The State (Columbia), The Rock Hill Herald, and The Columbia Record.
In 1985, Sharon “Shari” Faye Smith was a 17-year-old senior preparing for her class trip, a cruise to the Bahamas. She would also be singing the national anthem at her upcoming graduation from Lexington High.
Odd delay. But Hilda and Bob Smith would never get a chance to drape a graduation robe over their daughter’s shoulders and secure a mortarboard atop her 1980s state-of-the-art hair, curly and shoulder length with bangs blown skyward.
On May 31, 1985, on her way home, Shari stopped at her family’s mailbox at 5700 Platt Springs Road in Lexington, South Carolina. From his home-office window, her father, Bob Smith, saw Shari’s car at the end of the driveway.
But she never made it the 700 feet to the house.
Menace on the line. Bob, a pastor at Lexington Baptist Church, found the blue Chevette with Shari’s black shoes and her purse on the seat. Hilda, a Sunday school teacher, recalled her husband saying, “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Shari’s car is at the end of the driveway running and she’s not in it.”
Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts organized a huge search effort that included air and land resources and a 24-hour command center set up in a tractor trailer near the house.
Two days after the disappearance of the blond blue-eyed teenager, an anonymous phone caller who asked for Hilda Smith told her that he had Shari in his possession. To verify his claim, he described the black and yellow bathing suit she had on under her clothes the day she disappeared.
Envelope seized. He said he would release Shari, and in the meantime the two of them were eating and watching TV.
The kidnapper said he sent the Smiths a letter that would arrive shortly. But investigators couldn’t wait. They made the postmaster open up the USPS office early and intercepted the envelope.
The missive was in Shari’s handwriting, dated June 1, 1985 and headed “Last Will & Testament.” In the letter, Shari tells her family not to let the abduction ruin their lives.
Parents’ pain. Even though the circumstances under which she wrote the note must have been terrifying, she managed a bit of light-heartedness: “I love you all so damn much,” she wrote. “Sorry, Dad, I had to cuss for once. Jesus forgave me.”
On a subsequent call to the house, the kidnapper tormented the family by saying that he and Shari were now “one soul.”
“Do not kill my daughter, please,” Hilda pleaded.
Strange motivation. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Shari had diabetes insipidus, a rare form of the disease that requires massive hydration and prescription drugs. Her medicine was found in her purse in her empty car, but the caller assured Hilda that Shari was drinking plenty of water, according to tapes available on Oxygen.com. He also suggested the family arrange to have an ambulance at the house for when Shari came home.
The caller didn’t ask for money.
“I’ve never had a case like this before where the offender doesn’t make it clear what he wants,” FBI profiler John Douglas recalled in a 2022 interview. “Does he want ransom? Is it sexually motivated? He doesn’t just want to commit this crime, but he also wants to toy with the victims’ families, give them false hope that their child is still alive.”
Slips through their fingers. Clearly, the abductor particularly enjoyed playing out his power trips on women; he always asked for Hilda when he called and would later involve Shari’s older sister, Dawn.
Police traced at least one of the calls to a phone outside Eckerd’s in the Lexington Town Square Shopping Center, but the mystery man was gone by the time they arrived.
In his next call, he directed Hilda to take 378 West to an out-of-the-way structure with a backyard.
Up to his devices. On June 5, 1985, investigators found Shari Smith’s body there. They believed she died about two hours after she wrote the letter on June 1 and that the killer waited to reveal the location so that decomposition would obscure forensic evidence.
Investigators found traces of duct tape on her face, suggesting the killer suffocated her. They concluded that Shari had died of either suffocation or dehydration, according to court papers available on Murderpedia. Accounts vary as to whether or not the autopsy proved she had been sexually assaulted, but he ultimately would be charged with rape.
Profiler John Douglas predicted the murderer would be a white male in his 30s with a failed marriage and sex crimes in his past. They believed he used a device to disguise his voice on the phone calls and knew something about electronics.
Next victim. Meanwhile, the menacing killer continued his verbal assault. He called collect on the night of Shari’s funeral to describe how he killed her.
A few weeks later, he called the Smiths to discuss Debra May Helmick —a 9-year-old with no connection to the Smiths — who had been abducted outside her family’s mobile home on Percival Road in Richland County. A neighbor had run outside when she heard Debra screaming for help, but the kidnapper and the little girl with the long blond hair were gone.
It’s not clear why the mystery man contacted the Smiths instead of the Helmicks about Debra. Perhaps he simply liked talking to Hilda — she had a soft, feminine way about her.
Panic and caution. As mentioned, Dawn Smith, Hilda and Bob’s older daughter, agreed to help investigators by also speaking to Larry on the phone about Debra. Larry gave directions to a grassy area where officers found the little girl’s dead body.
Meanwhile, a police artist worked up a sketch of a possible suspect, a bearded man seen in the area.
The community stayed on high alert for the killer on the loose. Innocent bearded men were facing scrutiny because of the police drawing. Other local men were taking pains to shield the women in their lives, according to The State.
Devious callers. Police fielded dozens of calls on a tip hotline. A number of citizens suspected a local meter reader, but those leads never went anywhere.
And yikes, the authorities ended up arresting four people for making false claims or trying to extort money from the Smiths.
Then, investigators got a huge break once a laboratory thoroughly examined the note that Shari wrote while in captivity. Indentations on the paper showed an intact phone number probably written on the sheet of tablet paper above the one Shari used.
Kibitzing killer. The phone number ultimately led the police to a South Carolina couple, Ellis and Sharon Sheppard. Some of the calls to the Smiths had come from their home phone. A roll of 22-cent USPS commemorative mallard duck stamps in the Sheppards’ drawer matched the one from the “last will” envelope. Some of what looked like Sherry’s blond hairs were found in the Sheppards’ bathroom.
Fortunately, the Sheppards had proof they were out of town during the entire episode. After listening to recordings of the killer’s calls to the Smiths, Ellis identified the voice as belonging to Larry Gene Bell. Larry worked as an electrician on construction sites and had done some wiring work for Ellis. Larry had also been housesitting for them.
The Sheppards recalled that when Larry picked them up at the airport, he talked a lot about Shari Smith’s abduction.
Breakthrough in case. Finally, the police had a solid suspect.
“We were all extremely elated,” recalled Assistant Deputy Lewis McCarty during his appearance on “Cat and Mouse,” an episode of FBI Files. “We could not show any emotion. But we knew we had our man.”
On June 27, 1985, police stopped Larry Gene Bell on his way to work. True to the predictions, they soon discovered that he had a history of making obscene phone calls and much worse.
Dual identities? At the police station, officers set up a “confession” room with items that belonged to Shari Smith and Debra Helmick as well as evidence of his guilt such as photos of his fingerprints. They also pretended to sympathize with him to gain his trust. (It worked for the Chris Watts case — not a Forensic Files episode but among my true-crime favorites). They even brought in Hilda and Dawn Smith. Larry cried, but he didn’t confess.
Interrogators had tried to persuade Larry that he had dissociative identity disorder in the hopes that he’d spill his story. The suspect said that “the bad Larry Gene Bell” committed the crime, but he didn’t reveal anything else.
Criminals like Larry “make it seem dreamlike. They did a crime, but they don’t remember doing it,” John Douglas said during an interview with A&E. “It’s like two sides to their personality. They have a good side and the bad side.”
Born in the Deep South. So who was this sadistic killer?
Larry Gene Bell came into the world on Oct. 30, 1949, in Ralph, Alabama.
He played baseball at Eau Claire High School. But apparently participating in a team sport didn’t act as a conduit to popularity, or at least to a group of friends, as it usually does.
Bad breakup. Larry’s parents later referred to him as a loner.
Although it didn’t cite a source, the Daily News would later report that young Larry sometimes fell into “psychotic trances” and, as a teenager, sexually abused some of his female relatives.
As an adult, he worked for Eastern Airlines in Charlotte for a time. True to the profiler’s theory, Larry had married and gone through a bitter divorce. He lost custody of a son.
Criminal history. It’s not clear whether it started before or after his failed marriage but, by the time he reached the age of 26, Larry had begun a history of “assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature,” according to The State.
In one instance, he used a knife during a failed attempt to abduct 19-year-old Dale Sauls Howell behind a Super Duper after telling her, “Let’s go to Charlotte and party.” Another time, he flashed a start gun in an attempt to grab a female University of South Carolina student. He committed a third, similar crime, but served time for only one of the attacks. He spent three years in the Central Correctional Institute, and Judge Owens T. Cobb urged him to get psychiatric help.
He didn’t follow through on all the counseling recommended over the years, but he did spend some time at a VA hospital, where a psychiatrist concluded he had schizoid personality disorder, a condition marked by limited social interaction and minimal emotional engagement.
Vengeful public. At the time of his arrest in 1985, he was living with his parents— whom a local newspaper described as a respected couple — in their house on a cul-de-sac on Old Orchard Road in Lake Murray. Larry’s brother was a lawyer.
Unless you count Bells’ admission that Larry kept to himself in his youth, no one offered any hints to explain the genesis of his depravity. Neighbors described Larry as kind and helpful, according to The State.
Those who knew Shari Smith, however, didn’t feel too charitable toward Larry. One suggested tying him to a stake in a field and letting “people to do him what he did to those girls.”
Stalked and attacked. Larry went on trial in 1986. He showed up in court wearing a forest green prison uniform with his auburn hair cut close to his head.
“Larry was just — well, our Larry,” his mother testified. “We accepted him the way any family would accept a child. They say all children are different.”
Prosecutors made a case that Larry had spotted Shari outside a drugstore, then followed her home in his Buick and grabbed her when she stopped at the mailbox. He took her to the Sheppards’ house, where she wrote the note. Then he tied her to the bed, raped her, and suffocated her with tape.
Larry acknowledged that the voice on the taped phone calls with the Smiths belonged to him.
“At different points while the tapes were played,” the Columbia Record reported, “Bell shook with laughter, cried silently, watched the courtroom clock, and cracked his knuckles.”
Nutty prisoner. As if Larry hadn’t already freaked out the courtroom with his previous antics, while he was testifying, he did such things as turning to the jurors, cackling, and referring to his defense lawyer as his “professional teddy bear” who “takes care of me.”
During Larry’s evenings at the Berkeley County Jail, he paced, talked to himself, and sang “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “Silent Night,” according to The State.
So was Larry a lunatic who couldn’t control his own actions? A psychiatrist testified that she believed Larry’s antics were all an act — he wasn’t crazy at all, just a sadistic sociopath looking to escape severe punishment.
Show’s over. The fact that he never asked his victims’ families for ransom suggested that what he really craved was the thrill of frightening them, giving them false hope, crushing them, and then further tormenting them.
After deliberating for 47 minutes, the jury found Larry guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder. He was sentenced to die. (In a separate trial, he would receive the same sentence for killing Debra May Helmick.)
With the trial ended, “it was a little like the circus leaving town,” according to The State. The crowds of spectators disappeared, leaving Route 17 no longer jammed, and the “supply of short bottle Classic Cokes at the county courthouse didn’t run out for a change,” wrote reporter Margaret N. O’Shea.
And more disturbing behavior. Larry made numerous post-conviction salvos, including an appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1987, a post-conviction relief request in 1991, and an appeal to a U.S. district court in 1995.
His lawyers claimed he was schizophrenic, thought he was Jesus Christ, and was too mentally ill to face capital punishment. His behavior in prison included defiling himself with feces and drinking his own urine, according to UPI.
Still, all of Larry’s legal efforts failed.
Dustup with protestors. He turned down the option of dying via lethal injection and asked for electrocution instead. John Douglas said that he suspected Larry was playing tough guy by choosing the drama of the electric chair.
“Now, maybe I can get a rest,” said Donnie Helmick, Debra Helmick’s father. “Kill the son of a bitch.”
Donnie tangled with some of the anti-capital punishment demonstrators gathered outside the prison on Oct. 4, 1996 – the day when Larry Gene Bell became the second-to-last person killed in South Carolina’s electric chair.
Early victim’s memories. “We are relieved that the sentence has been carried out,” said Rick Cartrette, Shari’s uncle, as reported by UPI, “but just because it has been carried out, don’t forget Shari or Debra.”
Also present that day was Dale Sauls Howell, one of the women Larry attempted to abduct in the 1970s. She would later tell The Rock Hill Herald that he held a knife to her stomach before her screams elicited help. After the attack, she started sleeping with a baseball bat next to her in bed. Now, she was able to watch the hearse carry away Larry Gene Bell’s body.
He would never again torment his victims or their loved ones.
Tomes on the case. Forensic photographer Rita Y. Shuler, who worked on the murder case, interviewed Dale and other victims for Murder in the Midlands: Larry Gene Bell and the 28 Days of Terror that Shook South Carolina (The History Press, 2007).
Shari’s mother also wrote a book, The Rose of Shari by Hilda Cartrette Smith, which was published in 2001 and got good Amazon reviews, but is hard to find for sale online. (Hilda, who Forensic Files viewers will remember for maintaining a calm demeanor under duress, died in 2003 at the age of 61.)
The murder also inspired the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, which tells the story from Dawn’s perspective. The 1991 effort got 5.6 out of 10 stars on imdb.com — but has miraculously landed on Netflix under the name Victim of Beauty, so you can check it out and form your own opinion if you like.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — R.R.
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